I prefer to drive barefooted, with my toes outstretched, gripping the accelerator. There’s something child-like about feeling the gears shifting and the tires rolling under my heels…as if I’m back at my Grandmother’s home, driving her pea green Falcon up the long driveway, my toes barely able to reach the pedals from the edge of the bucket seats.
The Wyoming road rides smoothly, and extends far beyond the horizon, along a straight path to the sunset. This is the big sky country where I dream far more than drive. A grey blanket of rain brought me back, to test my alertness in my final driving hour, and challenged my flashbacks of hydroplaning in a Florida spring, some years ago. I was a dreaming child then too, lost in the wonderment of the passages of distance and time that played like a movie in the window.
I am more alert now, and being barefoot helps me to feel the undertow of side winds, the tired pavement and the carcass I couldn’t avoid. It’s as if the world is passing below my feet now, instead of in the window. And I am gliding above it, across the hypnotic mirages of Wyoming, where the sky is so big, that we all have room to fly.